Ditch Your Plans, Follow Your Heart

You've got it all figured out—so when things start to go off course, how do you deal?

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When I met John, he was 32 years old, in debt and living 600 miles away, in Detroit. With his parents. (Sexy, right?) He’d recently finished law school but had failed the bar exam and was back to his predegree job as a software consultant, which as far as I could see meant spending afternoons by a friend’s pool waiting for an assignment. He didn’t seem to have any real plans for the future beyond what to eat for dinner.

I, on the other hand, had just embarked on The Plan. I was 28 and living in New York City, ready to start a new chapter after having spent my 20s working hard as a magazine editor. I was enjoying life in NYC, but I didn’t have any big goals and had basically been going with the flow, seeing where things would lead me. I’d also been in a three-year on-again, off-again relationship with a guy I didn’t have much in common with and who I wasn’t sure cared that much about me, which caused me to invest a ton of brain space in petty-seeming worries. (“Did he not come to the party because he actually was tired, or because he hates my friends?!”)

So with my 30th birthday looming, I decided to get serious: Things were off for good with the guy, I realized I really wanted to become a freelance writer, and I felt a desperate need to travel and see the world. The Plan started to form: First and foremost, it was time to focus on me, so dating would not be part of The Plan. As for everything else, I worked with my bosses to take a 10-week leave; I’d spend three weeks traveling with a friend in South America, come back to the States for a week and visit my parents in Detroit for a weekend, then head to Southeast Asia for six weeks. After that, I’d return to NYC and work for two more years on staff, then start a freelancing business. Perfect, and planned down almost to the day.

But The Plan seemed to go awry as quickly as it had started. The day I got back to NYC from South America, my mom called and told me she’d been diagnosed with cancer. It was highly treatable, so she was likely to come through it OK, but she’d need major surgery and possibly radiation. My dad, almost 70, had his own health problems, and my mom needed a nurse. So instead of taking a weekend trip to Detroit before heading to Asia, I moved back in with my parents.

And then there was John, the happy-go-lucky, Paul Bunyan–looking guy from Detroit I’d met a few months before my trip at a bar in Brooklyn while he was visiting mutual friends. In the midst of my mom’s illness, in the thick of my angst about having to postpone The Plan and move home, I found myself spending a lot of time with John, who also lived at home, was free to see a weekday matinee, and drew me in with his wit, warmth and boyish grin.

As upset and anxious as I was—about my mom’s cancer, about lost Asian adventures, about my growing feelings for John (guys, remember, were not part of The Plan)—I had to laugh at the irony. Here was one of the few times I had actually charted a course for myself, and I’d hit roadblocks on all fronts: the short-term (my trip) and long-term (going back to NYC unencumbered to focus on my career). It felt as though the universe were saying, Ha! Gotcha!

But my disappointment about veering off The Plan soon faded. It felt good knowing that the one time I was truly needed by my mom—a woman who had made countless sacrifices for my sister and me—I could be there for her. She also, thankfully, recovered quickly, so I got to go on a shortened version of my Asian adventure. As far as the travel part of The Plan was concerned, my mom’s situation was more speed bump than roadblock.

My relationship with John, however, was turning into a full-blown detour. I had seen him nearly every day for three weeks, and as excited as I was to leave for my trip, I was worried about what would happen to us after I left. I was falling in love—and, let’s face it, kind of obsessing—when that was just the opposite of what The Plan dictated, and my paramour was at once perfect for me and all wrong. He had the qualities that a decade of bad dates and not-quite-right boyfriends had told me I wanted in a partner—he was romantic and kind, crazy smart but never arrogant, both sexy and goofy and with an off-the-charts sense of humor—but also some traits I had considered deal breakers. Besides living somewhere geographically undesirable (and with his parents), he seemed ambivalent about his future. Red flag—or, rather, flags.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about him. In Cambodia, I wished he were with me watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat, and I couldn’t wait to tell him about the sketchy-but-delicious street food in Phnom Penh and the bag of snakes on the commuter boat from Battambang. After I got back to NYC, I didn’t see him for several more weeks but still thought of him constantly. Except now those thoughts were less dreamy. We talked almost daily, yet I stressed over whether I really wanted to keep things going. And furthermore, what was he doing with his life, anyway?

It’s funny: The Plan was meant to protect me from all that stuff—complicated situations, obsessing, conflicted feelings—so I could focus on my future. Yet when I considered a future without John, my heart hurt. It felt wrong. It dawned on me that my heart or gut or intuition or whatever you want to call it hadn’t failed me before. Why would now be different? The Plan needed editing, and the revision should include John.

So I wrote him in. And over the next several months, he showed me that not only was he not an impediment to my adulthood, he was a shining example of how to be a grown-up. On his first trip to see me in NYC, we had lobster rolls at Pearl Oyster Bar, and he explained the mistakes that had gotten him into debt but also outlined what he was doing to get back on track, including moving back home. It was embarrassing, he said, but also necessary. His frankness, and that he trusted me enough to tell me all the bad stuff, was shocking in the best way possible. He recognized that scrapping his plans and doing what he had to was the smartest way to go. I’d misjudged his maturity.

After that visit, I knew my future wouldn’t go as I’d plotted. It’d be better. Dating long-distance was hard, but it gave me what I wanted all along: the freedom to concentrate on myself and my career. It sounds clichéd, but John helped bring out the best in me, and he said I did the same for him. He was more motivated about work, and soon he rented a house with a friend and was close to being debt-free. Then, after eight months of weekend visits and countless texts, emails and calls, John was assigned a two-year consulting project in Manhattan (apartment included)—right as we were about to take steps to finally be together. When his project ended, we moved to Chicago, and a few months later, he surprised me with homemade lobster rolls, told me that it was during our dinner at Pearl Oyster Bar that he realized he wanted to spend his life with me, and then he asked me to marry him.

I intend to be John’s wife forever, but I’ve otherwise given up making plans. I don’t like the process (planning our wedding was not fun for me—unlike the wedding itself), and I get stressed and uneasy when plans don’t pan out. I’m happiest when I don’t feel hemmed in by preconceived ideas of what’s supposed to happen.

Case in point: Two years ago, John and I decided to adopt a young dog from a shelter, figuring we’d avoid the crazy-puppy phase but have a friend who’d grow up with our family. We fell in love with Coco, who the shelter said was about 2 years old, but when we took her to the vet, he told us she was at least 10. She has cataracts and arthritis, and we’re pretty sure she’s deaf. But after our initial disappointment, we realized it was the best mistake. She’s so sweet and mellow and wants only to snooze, look out the window and bask in our love, and we know not to take her for granted. Coco’s one more reminder that my life can turn out even better than I could have imagined—or planned.